Tag Archive for Maliba Community Trust

Spring is here. We are no longer just off freezing, in the house and out, from sunset to sunrise. Without electricity the sounds and activities of quotidian village life move with natural light and shortly after sunset peace reigns. Aggressive dogs excluded, of course, darkness is their time. Eventually even the dogs settled down and those winter nights were long, cold and quiet.

After a candle-lit dinner I too would settle, into multi-layers of blankets, wearing multi-layers of clothing plus wool cap, thick socks and even gloves on especially cold nights. After an hour or so of reading by head-lamp I’d enjoy 10 hours of sleep or more each night. Just one more treat of my experience here for someone who was lucky to get 6 hours sleep per night in my “traditional” life. Read more

After the Hand Me Down distribution in August, it was back to business as usual, with a purpose though! Our next Hand Me Down was to be 12th October, and the donations were rolling in. Much time has been spent behind the scenes, sorting and packing the donated clothes. Last minute donations had come in and the dedicated volunteers work late into the night to sort and pack the clothes. It is a labour of love, done with a good heart and great excitement.

Friday dawns with pouring rain, which does not dampen our spirits, we know we are on a mission and will not be swayed. Together with our core team we have three new guest volunteers. This distribution is very special as it is Matilda’s inaugural trip! Matilda is Hand Me Down’s latest team member, a beautifully resorted Landy 110! We arrive at Maliba Mountain Lodge just before 8.00 pm with the last hour or so driving in the dark. Our new volunteers have no idea of the scenery around us. Tomorrow will reveal the beauty of Lesotho. Besides the natural beauty there are the wonderful people of Lesotho who have won our hearts. Read more

On the big-picture side The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is a massive Government program resulting from a treaty signed in 1986 which was an agreement to sell water from the Lesotho mountain areas to South Africa. Visit their website at http://www.lhwa.org for project details. In addition to financial and hydroelectric power benefits the LHWP has been instrumental in the formation of the beautiful Ts’ehlanyane National Park. From the LHWP website:

So your asking “what is Hand Me Down“? To answer your question, it’s initiative aimed at the collection and redistribution of your old clothes to less fortunate people and communities!
The SA Adventure team was beaming with excitement as we set off on the August Hand Me Down redistribution! The Land Rover’s were packed to the brim with all the bags of Hand Me Downs we had collected. They bounced and weaved their way up a rugged mountain road as we made our way to the Ha Mali Community centre in Lesotho! Read more

The SA Adventure Ladies Club set off on the 15th of April to Lesotho, for what was to be our first official Hand Me Down redistribution. We had chosen to work with Maliba Mountain Lodge. The lodge has sponsored a community centre in the nearby village Ha Mali that caters for orphaned children. We had the two Landy’s and the little Terrios known as ‘The Fish’ packed to the max with second-hand clothes that had been donated and we were very excited to get to our destination! Read more

Our first redistribution of Hand me Downs takes place from the 15th-18th of April 2012. We have decided to support to the Maliba Community Trust, in Lesotho.

The Maliba Community Trust is involved in empowering the local community around Maliba Mountain Lodge through various projects, such school development and repairs (schools are encouraged to grow their own food) establishing of a community forest, for harvesting as well as a Craft project, amongst others.

Every year SA adventure embarks on an expedition which has the ambition of sustainable development within various communities of Southern Africa. Our sustainable development includes the planting of vegetable gardens, developing school facilities and providing educational goods. As part of our expeditions, we have gathered and redistributed second hand clothes and toys to those in the local community. In doing this we have recognised that there is such a requirement for clothing, it only makes sense for us to call on those of you who can donate your “hand me downs” to those less fortunate. Old clothes are something everybody has and many people don’t know what to do with them, often they get thrown away or we leave them to pile up in the garage or cupboards.

Hand me Down is an appeal to local public to donate what they consider to be old clothes, so we can redistribute them to those less fortunate, through the correct channels! We intend on redistributing Hand me Downs every three months.

Even when people may think that no one could make use of it, someone can. This includes baby clothes, children’s clothes, adult clothes and shoes etc.

Public are welcome to contact us to arrange for the drop off/collection of your Hand me Downs and we will ensure that they are redistributed to those in need!

If you would like to be involved in the donation or redistribution of Hand Me Downs, please inbox us at info@saadventure.co.za. For more information about how SA Adventure is involved in communities, take a look at our expeditions and outreach projects.

After months of delay we finally got our layer chickens. The gardens of the community centre have also really started to grow. The chickens are going to provide eggs for the orphans and needy of the village, along with vegetables from the gardens.

We wanted to have free-range chickens and demonstrate how you can raise chickens without building an expensive concrete building. We built chicken tractors instead, enclosed chicken runs that are portable. After the chickens have eaten all the grubs and weed seeds on one spot we move the tractor/run to another spot and the previous one is fertilized and ready to be planted.

Although the tractors/runs are pretty simple, it’s taken many, many hours to build six, we still have one to go. We got layer chickens from South Africa. The chickens are a couple of months old and have lived in cages their whole lives. They had never seen sun or had the freedom of running around, and apparently don’t know what to do with it. One mme (woman/mother) from the support group that we work with joked that the chickens were like us Americans here, since after four days they are all still clustered in the shaded ends of the runs, apparently afraid of the sun, rain, and not being in a tight pack.

Last week we had the new community center opening, and it was a big success! After a very busy couple weeks of preparation and postponements, we finally were able to open the center and introduce its current and potential activities to the community. We had about 200 people of all different ages come to the opening. We didn’t run out of popcorn or fruit, and the drink mix was a surprisingly big hit and seemed to make up for the fact that there wasn’t any meat, which apparently is standard big event fare.

Juliana Fulton We are only a month away from opening the Ha Mali Community Center! The idea for its creation came from hearing all the different problems facing the families in my village when I went door-to-door for my household survey. My work at the schools didn’t seem to touch many of the problems the people in my village complained of: not having easy access to a clinic, not having jobs or training for them, the number of orphans living with elderly grandparent and sanitation issues. What seemed to be needed was a center for outreach and skills training within the village. World Vision recently built a pre-school, the only communally owned building in my village, and one that fit the outreach/ community center scheme perfectly. Maliba Lodge’s Community Development Trust was equally enthusiastic about the idea and agreed to help with the funding and applied for another Peace Corps volunteer to help make it a reality.